atomsmoosher:To be honest, I've only seen parts of The Ring, but why is Samara so hard to kill?

What if the only TV you have in your house is one of those tiny 3" portables? Will a little tiny Samara come out?

Because she's the malevolent spirit of a psychotic high-level psychic and telekinetic that was murdered by her adopted parents via live burial at the bottom of a well. Pre-death amorality, traumatic life, horrendous death, and almost god-like mental abilities; she doesn't just hit all the traditional markers for "ghost", she knocks them out of the park with bases loaded. In fact, you can't even get rid of her like with most spooks; all you can do is placate her by "solving" her murder, then making another tape and helping to distribute her malice to others.

I've never really found traditional horror movies frightening, but the gorier zombie flicks always gave me the spooks something fierce. Kind of odd considering how under-powered a zombie is compared to Jason, Meyers, or Freddy; maybe there's some sort of crowd-phobia mixed in there.

titwrench:Has anyone seen High Tension. It's a French horror/thriller that keeps you on your toes. The only bad part is once you know the ending the movie loses its edge you can't enjoy it the same way again.

Yeah, I was frightened by how they took Dean Koontz book Intensity and gave it a worse ending.

Heron:atomsmoosher: To be honest, I've only seen parts of The Ring, but why is Samara so hard to kill?

What if the only TV you have in your house is one of those tiny 3" portables? Will a little tiny Samara come out?

Because she's the malevolent spirit of a psychotic high-level psychic and telekinetic that was murdered by her adopted parents via live burial at the bottom of a well. Pre-death amorality, traumatic life, horrendous death, and almost god-like mental abilities; she doesn't just hit all the traditional markers for "ghost", she knocks them out of the park with bases loaded. In fact, you can't even get rid of her like with most spooks; all you can do is placate her by "solving" her murder, then making another tape and helping to distribute her malice to others.

titwrench:Has anyone seen High Tension. It's a French horror/thriller that keeps you on your toes. The only bad part is once you know the ending the movie loses its edge you can't enjoy it the same way again.

I like it but the end scene ruins it for some.

Also, I'm not sure if it classifies as horror, but it made me jump a few times.

And if you want to get into a semantics argument, Rusty Nail wasn't seen in 90% of the film, making the truck the monster.

I thought of that too, but I think he's more "cool" than outright scary (plus his appearance is sort of brief). One of my favorite movie villains is Ledger's Joker, for example, who's certainly a serial killer, but falls more under the "awesome" category than being outright frightening.

I thought of that too, but I think he's more "cool" than outright scary (plus his appearance is sort of brief). One of my favorite movie villains is Ledger's Joker, for example, who's certainly a serial killer, but falls more under the "awesome" category than being outright frightening.

Similar with someone's mention of The Thing earlier.

I just remember growing more and more uncomfortable as that scene unfolded, which is a rare thing for me. The theatre went completely silent, too, as people stopped munching popcorn and went to slack-jawed staring at the screen.

That list is all kinds of wrong. I mean yeah, Freddy was scary in the first movie, but he was more comical in the rest. Jason on the other hand, that shiat was scary. Dude never ran, just plodded on knowing he was gonna hack you to shiat with the machete, or smack your sleeping bag up against a tree with you still in it. Samara was creepy as shiat, Pennywise was scary in both the book and movie. Candyman should have been higher on the list as well. That movie creeped me the hell out the first time I watched it as a teen.

My personal list of creepy/scary

1. Samara2. Pennywise3. Candyman4. Mike Myers/Jason Voorhees, together since they're essentially the same character.5. Regan (little girl from The Exorcist) there was a scene where she's stabbing herself in the crotch with a cross shouting "Let Jesus fark you!" that creeped me the hell out.6. Hannibal Lecter,. Dude was scary creepy in Silence of the Lambs7. Freddy Krueger8. John Doe from Seven (the sheer dedication and will he applied to the shiat he did is scary as fark)9. Leatherface10. Cenobites from Hellraiser (only if we're talking the first 2 movies, they ceased to be scary after that.)

Krueger became a joke in the sequels, but hands down, the scene where the teen is running in the alley and he simply extends his arms all the way across... as a kid that scared the shiat out of me. Jason you could outrun or out dodge. No such luck with freddy. He only toyed with you, he owned your ass.

Face it, we all had plans for what to do if we ever faced a movie monster.

I always thought Michael Myers in the original first Halloween movie was terrifying.

Relentless, never hurries, can take multiple gunshots, can vanish in the blink of an eye. Jason Voorhees is just Michael Myers with a hockey mask and a machete.

Freddy became increasingly... Jokerish over time, his most serious portrayal was in the first movie.

Personally I think there is something to be said for the devious, cunning, spite-ish evil of Freddy over the simplistic killing machine evil of Jason and Michael Myers. Those two are more like forces of nature, they aren't clever but they do not stop, they're more like singleton zombies of unusual size really, the only cleverness these two display is an unnatural knack at staying out of sight until you start taking off your clothes. Both are scary but in a quite different way than Freddy, in general I prefer the thinking-evil but at the same time find the mindless-evil to be harder to screw up in the writing process When Freddy is done *right* he kicks butt, when the writing falls flat he is just awful.

The thing that scared me the most was the creepy malevolence of a possessed little girl giggling at the death of a priest:

Freddy has always been my favorite, simply because he was in your freaking HEAD!! No matter how hard the town tried to get rid of him, all it took was one person remembering or reading something and he was BACK! Yes, the sequels got silly, but they were still great IMO.

Candyman was another of my favorites. Much prefer the mental horror monsters to the hack/slash monsters.

dittybopper:Oh, another scary one: The figure in white from Exorcist III:

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I still hold that as the scariest moment in any film. The whole Gemini Killer thing was just plain evil.

A random Gemini quote, thanks to imdb:

I like plays. The good ones... Shakespeare... I like Titus Andronicus the best; it's sweet. Incidentally, did you know that you are talking to an artist? I sometimes do special things to my victims: things that are creative. Of course, it takes knowledge, pride in your work... For example, a decapitated head can continue to see for approximately twenty seconds. So when I have one that's gawking, I always hold it up so that it can see its body. It's a little extra I throw in for no added charge. I must admit it makes me chuckle every time. Life is fun. It's a wonderfull life, in fact... for some.